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2000 AD in Stages

Started by Funt Solo, 23 July, 2019, 10:57:01 PM

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IndigoPrime

At the time, it didn't come across as edgy. In hindsight, it comes across as a very immature take on edgy. If the aim was to create throwaway, pointless comics, this era of 2000 AD succeeded. It made me wonder why the hell I was still buying it. Given that Morrison in particular seemed to head wholesale into deep/meanintful comics territory, his 2000 AD effort (or lack thereof) here seems like little more than an insult — tear it all down, but build nothing in its place.

Subversion can be a good thing. Morrison has since shown he can work wonders with other characters, and do new and interesting things with them. With Dredd, he forgot about the interesting bit. Dredd became one dimensional. Grice was also one dimensional. There was no depth to the story, but also as a basic action thriller it's incoherent. From Hollywood, this as a film wouldn't be critically acclaimed — it'd just be dismissed as violent noise. (Notably, it also upends Grice, transforming him from a sneaky little shit into a punchy macho angry bloke. There was an interesting story to be told about Grice's revenge. This wasn't it.)

Elsewhere, I do remember the stories reasonably well. Really and Truly is what it is. Nice art. Paper thin. Maniac 5 is... fine. Big Dave remains divisive and to my mind is genuinely offensive, punching down rather than up. Being the thing you're satirising is not satire. It's a very teenager way of approaching this kind of material, and if the aim was to do something beyond merely yelling POOF a lot, it's an abject failure.

Which leaves Slaughterbowl. Echoing Colin, third-rate John Smith is still typically solid, and this for me was the one properly redeeming thing in the Prog at the time. (I also found Maniac 5 reasonable, if trope-heavy and ultimately forgettable.) There was worse to come, though; and those issues without Smith in frequently had nothing worth reading at all. 2000 AD's nadir is on the horizon. Poor Funt Solo...


Funt Solo

Oops! I forgot the links to the ABC videos for Big Dave and Maniac 5.
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Funt Solo




2000 AD Stage #28: 2-Prog Mini-Series

The prog continues to try new meta-formats: this time four two-part stories running alongside the continuing Dredd mini-epic of Inferno. This might read like a top line-up of thrills (Dredd, Stront, Rogue, Kirby and Slaine), but some of them are in their distinctly off-the-boil incarnations. 

Imagine an episode of Scooby Doo featuring only Scrappy. Or that 80s D&D cartoon featuring only Uni.  Or Buffy with just Tara. Or all of television replaced by scenes of Christopher Biggins in Rentaghost. Or Transformers with just Bumblebee - ah ... never mind.





Judge Dredd: Inferno
In these two episodes credulity is stretched by having all the good Judges just standing outside the West Wall, like there's about twenty of them. Grice's gang could just shoot them but are instead harassing old age pensioners for small change. In a brain-splintering set-piece the Statue of Judgement is toppled and, from its position overlooking the Statue of Liberty, somehow manages to smash through the West Wall, suggesting that Mega-City One is about three or four football fields wide.
Still has two episodes of shouty mayhem and geographical lunacy left to go...


Strontium Dogs: How The Gronk Got His Heartses
Uhm ... Genesis (chapter one of the bible, not the band) meets the Gronk's back-story? Great art from Nigel Dobbyn suffers next to ponderous hippie-smurfing from Ennis. One question: does Gronk really magically levitate into space at the end or is it all just a metaphor?
A prelude to The Darkest Star, starting up in prog 855...


Rogue Trooper [Friday]: Scavenger of Souls, Prologue
At the end of Apocalypse Dreadnought (prog 791 in 1992) Fr1day was floating in a bubble in space. Somehow he's now been teleported to ... a war-torn planet. And he's been crucified (like at the beginning of Cinnabar). A weird dude called the Scavenger of Souls is introduced in a "he was always here" kind of a way. So, this is an additonal level of soft reboot of what's always been a soft reboot of a hard reboot, and doesn't tell us much (except that there's too many boots for these feet).
1994's Scavenger of Souls stretches this further starting in prog 873...


Journal of Luke Kirby: Sympathy for the Devil, Prologue 
A flashback tale of Luke's father and uncle that brings a biblical slant to the story by suggesting that Santa (no, wait) Satan is gearing up to introduce famine, war, genocide and heroin to earth. Uhm ... aren't those here anyway?
A lead in to a longer tale beginning in prog 873...


Slaine: The Jealousy Of Niamh
A neat little two-parter: Niamh is jealous that Slaine is shagging Danu on the side, so they both get punished by being tied to a tree together and fed by Ukko.
Immediately followed by Demon Killer next prog...





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References:
- Barney
- The 2000 AD ABC
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

TordelBack

Quote from: Funt Solo on 23 April, 2020, 11:04:43 PMSatan is gearing up to introduce famine, war, genocide and heroin to earth. Uhm ... aren't those here anyway?

Luke Kirby is set just at the end of that same numinous time when Jesus walked the green and pleasant land and Brexiters were all obedient yet risk-taking children who didn't mind a parental slippering and a dose of polio after a long day fighting the Nazis.

Richard

I've only just discovered this thread for some reason, and it's brilliant! Thank you for this.

I agree with most of what has been said about the Summer Offensive, except that Slaughterbowl was a great story (somewhat marred by rather mediocre art). That, and Carlos's great art on Dredd, are the only good things to come out of the SO. Luckily, I was too young to recognise how shit it was at the time, otherwise I would probably have stopped reading the prog and missed out on two decades of brilliant comics that started a couple of years later. But first we had to wade through a few more months of stuff that was even worse than the Summer Offensive.

sheridan

Quote from: Funt Solo on 23 April, 2020, 11:04:43 PM
Strontium Dogs: How The Gronk Got His Heartses
Uhm ... Genesis (chapter one of the bible, not the band) meets the Gronk's back-story? Great art from Nigel Dobbyn suffers next to ponderous hippie-smurfing from Ennis. One question: does Gronk really magically levitate into space at the end or is it all just a metaphor?

It's been ages since I read that story so don't know the context, but there is prior art for Gronks flying through space (though as part of their swarming season from their home planet Blas in the Galego system).

Jacqusie

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 23 April, 2020, 11:34:22 AM
At the time, it didn't come across as edgy. In hindsight, it comes across as a very immature take on edgy. If the aim was to create throwaway, pointless comics, this era of 2000 AD succeeded. It made me wonder why the hell I was still buying it...

It used to make me smile when Big Dave was lauded as satire as if we stupid readers didn't get the joke. I didn't care what the creators thought it was supposed to be, if it looks like crap, smells like crap and reads like crap, it was utter crap. At this point the prog's mediocrity was being held up by the gossamer thin threads of one or two strips and it wasn't getting better.

I couldn't afford the Meg at the time, but there appeared to be more fun going on at over at that party, than the one we were having round Russ Abbot's house, where everyone was telling you to sniff the poppers, smile and HAVE FUN!

Thank god for Deadline magazine at this time is all I can say...

paddykafka

I'm in the minority of Tooth readers, in that I really enjoyed Big Dave and found it quite funny, for what it was. Different strokes as they say. Manchester's Hardest Man and Dredd were about the only strips I could be bothered with at the time. That being said, I'm glad it was fairly short-lived, as I imagined the joke would have worn thin after a while. The rest of the strips did absolutely nothing for me.

Aaron A Aardvark

This period was during my Long Walk so I've only read the Dredds.

I've heard about the Summer Offensive and always been curious about Big Dave. Has it ever been reprinted?

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Aaron A Aardvark on 29 April, 2020, 08:10:36 AM
This period was during my Long Walk so I've only read the Dredds.

I've heard about the Summer Offensive and always been curious about Big Dave. Has it ever been reprinted?

There are some copyright / ownership issues that mean I don't think it has. Which maybe  the same as those that surrounded Zenith - though that be could be wrong - or they are simply known to be creator owned (Edit actually Barney has them down as Creator owned). Whatever the reason there is clearly not the same desire to resolve or bypass these issues. At a guess as there isn't much demand to see these again?

Most of that is speculation on my part but in summary they have never been reprinted that I am aware of.

broodblik

Quote from: Colin YNWA on 29 April, 2020, 08:48:30 AM
Quote from: Aaron A Aardvark on 29 April, 2020, 08:10:36 AM
This period was during my Long Walk so I've only read the Dredds.

I've heard about the Summer Offensive and always been curious about Big Dave. Has it ever been reprinted?

There are some copyright / ownership issues that mean I don't think it has. Which maybe  the same as those that surrounded Zenith - though that be could be wrong - or they are simply known to be creator owned (Edit actually Barney has them down as Creator owned). Whatever the reason there is clearly not the same desire to resolve or bypass these issues. At a guess as there isn't much demand to see these again?

Most of that is speculation on my part but in summary they have never been reprinted that I am aware of.

I have read somewhere (cannot remember where it was) that Big Dave is owned by the creators and not Rebellion. The ownership was transferred or something like that.
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

Aaron A Aardvark

Thanks for the info. I'll try not to be too disappointed.

IndigoPrime

Pop over to the Daily Mail website and read some comments threads about immigrants. Copy random answers and you've got the basis for a Big Dave script.

Tjm86

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 29 April, 2020, 01:11:37 PM
Pop over to the Daily Mail website and read some comments threads about immigrants. Copy random answers and you've got the basis for a Big Dave script.

... but without the humour.  Steve Parkhouse artwork is a plus but I reckon he probably wants to forget about it. 

Funt Solo

Quote from: Aaron A Aardvark on 29 April, 2020, 08:10:36 AM
I've heard about the Summer Offensive and always been curious about Big Dave. Has it ever been reprinted?

As others have said, the art is well done, and the humour is well written - in the same way that there's well-written humour in Till Death Us Do Part. Both have issues with accidentally (and partially) becoming the thing they mean to pillory.

I can summarize the plot of the first series, for you. Saddam Hussein has created an alien love gun (shaped like an enormous phallus) that's turned the British army into stereotypical homosexual queens incapable of fighting. John Major (the prime minister) brings in Big Dave - "Manchester's hardest man" - and his two murderous dogs. Big Dave joins up with Terry Waite, who's portrayed as a combination of himself and Arnie.

Together they leap into Iraq (without parachutes because they're for "poofs"), shout "poof" a lot and defeat Saddam. The entire plot revolves around Big Dave being too "hard" to be turned into a "poof" by Saddam's big love gun.

The next mini-series has Diana and Fergie play as The Fat Slags from Viz and Big Dave either beating up or killing the entire royal family. And beating up on Postman Pat - drowning him (or nearly) in his revolting toilet.

(It's not too surprising it's not been reprinted and that Rebellion perhaps don't really want it. If you were to draw it yourself and post it here on the message board I expect you'd get banned.)
++ A-Z ++  coma ++